Greetings and Salutations

I'm part of the editorial staff of this fine website.

About Game Diary

Game Diary was a daily series written by Stephen Totilo for MTV's Multiplayer blog that I enjoyed following because it presented impromt thoughts and progress on the games that the editor was playing. Sadly, the diary was retired in 2009 shortly after he moved over to Kotaku.com. I want to be clear that Game Diary was not my idea but something I enjoyed following enough that I figured I'd try it here at 1UP.

About Me

I'm a New Yorker who moved out to San Francisco to learn more about games coverage and editorial operations. I've been living in San Francisco since August 2007, and I used to teach Math to high school students back in the Bronx.

Stuff on this Site I'm Proud of

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Review

Tekken Cover Story

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Preview

Shadows of the Damned Review

Blog

Full disclosure: I'm a backer of Republique. I listen to a monthly podcast made by the developer called Camouflaj Radio and enjoy hearing the core creative team at Camouflaj discuss the changes happening to their game. If you're someone interested in the process of game design, their show offers some valuable insight into the conversations that typically happen behind the behind the scenes.

Camouflaj earned my support on Kickstarter because of thier game's ambitious premise: It's a big-budget iOS release that wants to deliver a core experience not typically associated with Apple's platform.

As part of a site wide update, the makers of Republique posted new screens and a developer video to give everyone an update regarding the status of their game. The video talks about some of the changes to the final version of the game, which includes a departure from pre-rendered backgrounds to fully 3D areas, and revised one-touch mechanics and A.I.

But will we see Republique again before its summer iOS debut? Camouflaj founder Ryan Payton told Polygon to expect impressions from a new verticle slice demo at GDC 2013.

I hate to admit it, but the first five weeks of Halo 4's first season of Spartan Ops -- a cooperative campaign mode for up to four players -- left me terribly disappointed. Leading up to its release, I can remember how excited Jeremy and I were for the opportunity to cooperatively use Armor Abilities to squash the Covenant and their clever Promethean buddies. More importantly, developer 343 industries promised Spartan Ops would provide everyone with a reason to move on from Firefight -- a wave-based mode that had no story ties and originally debuted in Halo 3: ODST.

In the end Spartan Ops had the opposite effect on me, despite the developer's best intentions. After a dull first half, season one of 343i's innovative coop experience felt desperately in need of fine tuning. Every person I know has a different gripe about Spartan Ops. Some folks disliked the reused campaign spaces and rather straightforward objective system -- a structure that dilutes gameplay down to a clear-the-area-and-then-activate-the-switch pattern of play. Others detest the lack of failure as an option. In Spartan Ops, there's no shared life pool among the players. If someone dies -- and on the highest difficulty, they probably will -- they simply respawn. Constantly. And with zero consequences for failure. Some people would argue that Halo has always played out this way, but the single-player campaign felt way more focused by comparison.

This week, 343i sets to redeem Spartan Ops and wrap up their post-Halo 4 story arc. And, like you, we're curious to see the results. I played two chapters of the latest episode last week in Seattle and noticed a much more focused effort by 343i compared to first five weeks. But we're a community site, so why not hear what you have to say. If you've got some time to kill, let's collaborate and do some community building on 1UP! For the rest of this week -- Jan 24 - 26, 2013 -- I'll be playing Spartan Ops Episode Six between the hours of 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. PT. Join me for a session -- send a message to Mr Sushi X on XBL -- and, afterwards, send me a paragraph or two of what you think of this week's episode of Spartan Ops. I'll compile your responses for an article to run on the site at the end of the week.

Win a copy of this book (figurines not ncluded).

One lucky player chosen at random will receive a free art book titled "Awakening: The Art of Halo 4" along with a Halo 4 soundtrack CD. All you have to do to enter is join in and play any chapter of this week's episode with me. The winner will be announced on Monday. I realize this a contest, but I encourage all participants to be critical. Does Episode Six redeem Spartan Ops? Is it different or more of the same? Respond in the comments section and let me know what you think.

I usually leave the repair of broken electronics to professionally trained people -- and typically advise people to seek the help of said professionals whenever possible -- but I secretly relish the opportunity to open things up myself. I never really fixed anything before -- actually, that's half-true: I worked at an Apple Store and started Genius training in 2008 -- but I picked up the habit of openining up electronics around Middle School and often found my way into anything broken around the house -- even if it meant doing so by force.

One night nearly two years ago, my launch PS3 stopped playing games. I didn't know what happened at first: I put in the disc and the system would start up and shutdown immediately. The worse part was that the system had a copy of EA's NBA Jam reboot trapped inside. After about a week I decided to weigh my options: I could call Sony consumer support and pay a replacement cost -- the unit was well outside of its one-year warranty -- or just find out how to fix it myself. As you can probably tell -- thanks in part to the title of this blog -- I decided to put it aside and buy a PlayStation 3 Slim instead. Sure, it was a more expensive option, but I figured I'd try to fix the system since it had backwards compatibility, a precious feature that let owners play PS2 and PS1 games which Sony kicked to the curb early on in the PS3's lifespan as a cost reducing measure.

Thankfully our friends at iFixit know people like me exist in the world, and eventually I found their handy PS3 repair guide and learned how to fix a hardware issue commonly labeled the "Yellow Light of Death (YLOD)". Now, I only needed to find time to fix the system and finally recover my game from the disc tray. And that, my friends, took me two years. OK, so maybe I got a little lazy, or I simply played games on my then-new PS3 Slim to compensate, but clearly other priorities took up my time.

Two weeks ago, I finally took apart my PS3 and fixed it using iFixit'shandy repair guide, and a $40 kit they sell on the site that included all the necessary equipment needed. These tools may sell for less separately through other sites, so please point let me know in the comments. Without further ado, please check out my experience.

With the top case out of the way, I'm off to a solid start. The iFixit guide has a handy iPad app full of useful pictures that make identifying what to disassemble fairly quickly. Since I haven't used the system in two years, there's a ton of dust in this thing. Gross!

Here's the Blu-ray drive. There's a copy of NBA Jam trapped inside (not shown). When I worked at Apple, I knew a guy who could loosen the disc with a handy spudger, but I don't want to risk ruining the disc at this point. I waited two years to retrieve this copy of NBA Jam. I can wait a little longer.

Holy cow! Do you remember these? The original PS3 had multimedia slots for SD Cards, Compact Flash, and even Memory Stick/PRO/Duo. Sony originally intended this system to be a multimedia friendly machine, a way for folks to share thier images and movies on the TV, but later changed their minds and removed them entirely to bring down costs. These multimedia readers could've been better implemented through apps that could've shared your pictures and movies to popular Internet services like YouTube or Flickr -- something the company later did with the PS Vita a few months after launch.

I've got a few more steps to go before I reach the motherboard, but just take a look at that fan. It's huge! Up until now I'd read plenty of articles and forum posts about the size of Sony's fan, but I didn't quite believe it until I saw one up close myself.

Here's the back of the fan. Not much to really say here except that I need to wipe off the crusty white thermal paste and replace it later.

Eureuka! After almost an hour of tearing down this PS3, I finally reached pay dirt. Now time to clean off the thermal paste and use the heat gun to reflow the sodder on the motherboard.

Here I am, face-to-face with the Emotion Engine CPU. This chip made the magic of playing PS2 games on PS3 possible, but was later replaced by software emulation solution before Sony pulled the plug on BC entirely -- a shame considering previous hardware generation games on Sony hardware became part of the company's identity since the PS2. I know there's a Cell Processor in here somewhere, but I'm not as concerned about it. To be fair to Sony, BC lives on in a downloadable form today, but I really want to keep this system so I can play everything.

With the thermal paste cleaned off and replaced, it's time to put this thing back together. I only had two small problems:1) a cable I needed to remove the power was lodged into a weird place, and the manual didn't describe how to get around it, and 2) the replacing the thermal pads took a lot longer than I thought -- the pads wouldn't separate from the sticky paper without a lot of careful pulling. Still, It didn't take long to figure out a work around.

I turned on the system and recovered my copy of NBA Jam with no problems. I still recommend professionals repairs over the D.I.Y. model -- remember kids, electricity is dangerous and knowing is half the battle -- but I'm too stubborn to take my own advice. How else would you explain holding onto this thing for two years? Someone on Twitter told me that this only brought his system back for three months, but I'm not 100% sure about it. In the meantime, it's time to go slam dunk a few basketballs.

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Comments (3)

Good job.

Just wanted to say that even though we have lost contact with each other that I have been following what you have been doing on here very closely. You make me and all your old friends very proud of all that you have accomplished up to this point. Wish you nothing but the best and success in your future which shouldn't be too hard for you considering where you came from and where you are today.

* Greetings from an old friend *

Jose, as I read through some of your articles, reviews, etc it really reminded me more of what a great guy you were. When you told me how you moved out to CA and moved up in this industry, I really wasn't surprised in the least. You were one of the few people who stood out. You're a great writer and I 1UP/IGN is lucky to have a hard working diligent person such as yourself. I hope all continues to go well for you and the rest of the editors / staff as well. I'm sure there are a great deal of changes to contend with although it will lead to great things I'm sure.